The current mortgage crisis and congressional buyout schemes point to the larger issue of fiscal irresponsibility on the part of big banking. I think the result is probably our own “Panic of 2008?”
How many economic “panics” have been a direct result of bad practices by big banking? Let’s see: the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1907 come to mind (have to admit not sure if the reasons were “bad practices”), and others come to mind (1857) but were they a direct result of big banking? In 1857 banks put a lot of speculation into businesses that started to fail, but were these practices irresponsible? Most likely they were ill-advised and the product of greed.
Looking through Wiki, I see that in 1873 things got so bad that fires sprang up in cities without the means to deal with them, and so they burnt uncontrollably. Coal could not be delivered to Trains, and transportation networks failed in some parts of the country. The U.S. Army was fighting the Apaches on foot (horses were breaking down and without replacements). Wagons hand to be pulled by hand, cargo filled trains and ships sat unloaded, and deliveries of basic things like food came virtually to a halt. There are those who might argue that if we do not do something about our energy supply, maybe, we see similar things in 5 years, maybe sooner?
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Don’t look now, but there is a possibility of a new Cuban Missile Crisis with Russian apparently planning to fly long-range bombers to Cuba on a regular basis. “If they did I think we should stand strong and indicate that is something that crosses a threshold, crosses a red line for the United States of America,” said General Norton Schwartz, nominated to be the air force’s chief of staff.
Finally, the New York Times is in serious trouble as it was recently reported that their second-quarter earnings fell 82 percent from the year-ago, dropping its net income to $21.1 million.
